Today is one of those days. I’m so tired. I have a lot I want to do. The usual. Normal actually.

I was rushing around upstairs dressing the kids. Earlier Iona had suggested we put some “lovely music on” Ok. I suppose it makes a change from the usual background noise of Cbeebies. So I put on one of my favourite Christmas music* As I was walking around upstairs,  music drifted upwards, and I heard the words of the choir singing…”All is Well”

Yesterday I wrote about the traditions of Christmas, But today, I am humbled, and I want to express the joy of the real meaning of the day.

“All is well”, sure in someone else’s life maybe…we think. But the miracle of Christmas is that, All really is well…because, He was born….God with skin on..we could touch him, and he could touch us.

Celebrating Christmas in our home this year is a time to be thankful for how far we’ve come, and for the fact that we’ve made it through the year, incredibly blessed with this house, and God’s grace. But life is never all sorted out. Nothing is ever perfect. There is still hard work ahead, challenges, frustrations, imperfections, wrinkles to be ironed out.

On the day to day it becomes so easy to forget the big picture and become utterly consumed and depressed about the present difficulties. I’m tired, I haven’t showered, the house is messy, my kids are not in perfect health, I’m feeling disconnected from people and insecure, I’m  yelling at my kids too much for nothing, my relationships still need hard work,  it’s been just one too many nights of broken sleep, money is tight this month, the car is frozen shut, My mom has cancer, my family is far away, all those things….

But…because of Christmas…I can say with all the confidence in my heart:  ”All is Well”  Because He is with us. Emmanuel.

Because He came that night…I have the gift of this life…with all it’s blessings, challenges, tears, pain, heartache, beauty, suffering, inconsistencies, imperfections…..and I can walk each day, knowing I’m not alone….Emmanuel.

That little baby in the manger grew up..became a man….and then gave his life…for all of us…so we could have life to the full…and life eternal.

All is Well

*Michael W. Smith Christmas

Happiness is….sitting down in a clean house after the carnage of a busy day celebrating. We just finished shifting the furniture back to where it belongs after clearing a space in the conservatory for everyone to sit down and eat Thanksgiving dinner. Celebrating it overseas is not easy. You really have to work hard to make it happen. It’s a lot of fun sharing it with people, and introducing them to the delights of pumpkin pie and green bean casserole….but at the same time, you are in that mode of “making it happen”

I now think my husband gets it. He didn’t before, but after five years of marriage, he is starting to.

First thanksgiving overseas, 2001. Ireland! I was on a total high just by the very fact that I was living there. Missionaries from Cork graciously invite me to theirs for Thanksgiving but I had not been away from the states long enough to really truly appreciate it. Had a lovely time though.

Second Thanksgiving, 2002. Was fully into the swing of not living in America, and was really not bothered about the day. In some ways I was almost doing the “I don’t need to celebrate Thanksgiving, I live in Europe now”. I had a lot of other things going on in my life and it seemed pretty insignificant.

Third Thanksgiving, 2003,  I’d JUST moved to England, as in, I think i’d arrived the week before. Random people I’d only just met decide we should celebrate thanksgiving. Memories are of  not having a car and slogging back from the supermarket on the Saturday with ready made pie crust and ingredients for a green bean casserole. I also remember it being a huge massive ordeal getting the tinned pumpkin of the internet. Anyway, we did the meal, I hardly knew the people, and to top it off….someone put a steaming pot of mashed potatoes on the coffee table and ruined the French polish. I was totally mortified! Nice way to impress my hosts!

Thanksgiving 2004…not too bothered this year, but my mom was actually visiting, so she cooked up a Thanksgiving meal for Jon and I, and his family which was really sweet. Also, we went to Ex-pat party in Liverpool on the Saturday and ate lots of pumpkin pie.

Thanksgiving 2005. This was the year it really hit me. I had just gotten married, and four years of “I’m not homesick in the least” caught up with me. I missed everyone as they had all recently been over for my wedding. Marianne to the rescue with Chinese take-away and everything remotely American she could find flying through Tesco at 7:00 PM. So family was far away but friends were near to cheer.

Thanksgiving 2006. Not so bothered this year as I was 9 months pregnant. However Marianne organized baby shower/thanksgiving party at her’s for me….no pumpkin pie or anything but a lovely thought and a nice night.

Thanksgiving 2007…AMERICA at last!!! Very excited. Jon experiences it for the first time, complete with Black Friday shopping. We go to my Aunt’s house whom I consider an expert at warm fuzzy Thanksgiving tradition. There are tons of people, two tables, mismatched chairs…all that. Somehow I managed to end up with a piece of store bought pumpkin pie, however the whole week was great…lots of Starbucks coffee.

Thanksgiving 2008…South Africa!!! With the help of friends who are totally up for it and raring to go, we have a storming Thanskgiving. We invite loads of people to our small house and the the neighbours totally kick in and help. Everyone brings a traditional recipe that I’ve assigned them,  and we have a massive feast. They all vow to keep the tradition going and can’t get over how much fun it is. Jon finally turns to me and says “ok I get it now….thanks for this!!!” I vow after this to make it special for our family in years to come.

Thanksgiving 2009….back in England…just had Judah, living in Sandbach..not in the best of spirits…I am completely fine with not celebrating this year but committed to celebrating in future. However good friends John and Rebecca have us over on the Saturday and I made some of the traditional recipes and we mark it nonetheless.

So that brings us to this year. Jon actually booked the day off work! Iona is old enough this year to start to really get it and appreciate it. I start planning a menu and making plans and inviting people. I was excited to be doing it on the day itself. However, a week before, our oven element breaks!! We order a new one but are uncertain of when it’s going to arrive! The day before I get all emotional and cry and say how stupid it is to try and be celebrating it..I’m stressed about the oven…etc. The day itself arrives and I have a back up plan sorted out…but then at the last minute the oven part arrives and all is well. We celebrate that evening and it’s all nearly perfect. The only thing missing is overnight guests…will have to work on that for next year. In many ways, this Thanksgiving was a great reflection on this year for us…it’s been a huge year of drama….and more highs and lows than ever..but we now have so much to be thankful to God for. A stronger marriage, a beautiful new home, a sense of finally putting some roots down and being settled, and of course good friends.

I think next year I’d like to find some stray ex pats to include in the celebrating…I love introducing new people to the holiday but it’s also great to share it with people who share the memories and for whom it means something to. I know to some extent I am always going to the one having to “make it happen” over here…it’s just one of the consequences of being overseas. I can either get all sad on the day and bemoan how it’s “not the same” as it is back home, (which it isn’t, no matter how well I do at it, it won’t ever be quite the same) or I can put myself out there and make the effort. It feels a little bit foolish…but, it’s worth it, especially for the kids..and for those who get to experience pumpkin pie for the first time!

When I first told one of my friends that our offer had been accepted on a house in Congleton. She was happy for me, but then said, “now the roller coaster begins”

And so it has. I think right now I’m probably coming down the highest hill, with no end in sight. It’s one of those roller coasters that goes all the way underground into a dark scary cavern.

This is all happened so fast. While I was in the states, I knew I was heading home into some sort of limbo, and I was dreading it. My heart longed to be settled, somewhere. To start making a home for my family. I know you can make a home in whatever sort of place you dwell, but there needs to be some sense of permanence about the place, some sense of having arrived. It seems since I left home, I have not lived in any one place for more than two years, and some places I’ve lived less than six months.  Life simply has not stopped. There has always been some big change looming on the horizon, and that’s kind of fun when you’re young, or when that change is something you can get your head around, like marriage, or having a baby, or living overseas for a year….but when that change is inevitable, but unknown, you start to carry around this creeping sense of unsettledness about you, and it eats away at your peace.

So when we found ourselves looking at houses one Saturday shortly after arriving back here in the UK, I was happy, but scared. I could not believe that it was going to just happen like that, so easy. I was even more scared when we seemed to find a house that had most of what we wanted out of a home, and in our price range. It wasn’t just the home either, it was in a location I had previously dismissed in my mind, but was now warming to for a number of reasons. Everything felt really right. I tried to be low key about it, but then I felt guilty for not being positive, for not believing it was going to happen. So then I actually started to get excited. Sure it was stressful, there was tons of paperwork, and anxiety over getting it all completed on time. But overall, I was not too worried. It would have been nice to be able to just give 30 days notice after it was all completed, but our landlord would take no less than a six month lease at a time so this meant we needed to be out by the end of August.

Then last Monday, I got a phone call from the bank. At first it was just sounded like some little niggly jobs I needed to do, but then she said “oh and there is one more thing” right. “the valuer has been to see the house and has valued it at quite a bit less than what you were going to pay for it…” meaning, the bank would not give us the mortgage we’d applied for. We would be looking at upping our deposit, (which was already stretched pretty far) or taking out a different product with rubbish interest rates. Right. Ok. It did not help that it was Jon’s birthday and he was out with Iona at the time watching a movie. Suddenly our run of happy days came to a grinding halt.

The vendor of the house was already quite grumpy for having bought the house two years ago for a certain price and already he was losing money on it. The estate agent we’d been dealing with seemed pretty defensive of the current price and did not really seem keen to help us out at all. He was supposedly talking to the vendor all this week but then admitted to Jon on Friday that the vendor was actually on holiday in Poland and that he hadn’t spoken to him until that day. The valuation was challenged but unfortunately due to the current market, it looks like the valuer was right based on the price of other properties sold in the same area in the last six months.

So basically…the vendor will not come down in price, and we can not afford to up our deposit anymore, and in reality do not want to overpay for the house. I suppose the bank views any house purchase as an investment…which this one really isn’t…it seems to have reached it’s ceiling of value…but…for us, we’re just looking for a home….not something to “do up and sell in five years time”

So then on top of all this, I get a call from the letting agency from this house wanting to take some “desperate woman” around who needed it as soon as possible. The woman came and immediately signed up for 12 months and put her deposit. As the estate agent and this woman poked around the house, I was hit with the reality that this really is not our home. It belongs to someone else and they have every right to poke around. I felt judged and guilty as I knew the carpets were in a state. I’m terrible with keeping carpets clean and I suddenly felt like some irresponsible student. After they left I felt so low, almost like I was about to be evicted. We knew we’d be cutting it close with the current house we were buying so this of course leaves no time find another house to buy. It looks like we will need to rent again. We spent yesterday looking at other houses, just trying to get some more options, but I found it was so hard. I had started to visualize our family in a certain house, and the other houses we looked at seemed a million miles away from that ideal. I then started to feel guilty that I was being too picky and needed to just accept the reality that the other house was unique and we’re simply not going to find anything else like that in our price range.

Whatever…I suppose it’s hard because I had a taste of this period of unsettledness coming to an end…of being able to finally start settling down….and it seems not to be. Of course everyone keeps telling me “there will be something so much better” and all that…but in the mean time, I just feel pretty stupid. We dared to take this step…and now we just have egg on our face…facing eviction at the end of the month with no where to go. So Monday morning will have me on the phone to various estate agents trying to find a place to rent, and I’m sure we’ll find something and we will get through this…but it feels really rubbish right now. We’ve prayed every step of the way and it’s hard when you really thought you heard God’s voice in it all.

Boo

So after three and a half years of nursing in public without incident….I experienced what far too many women have experienced in the western world. The “confrontation”

The sad thing was..it happened in a place where I would have least expected it.  It happened at my parents church. It was just at the start of the service here in the States. (this is after three and a half years of active church involvement in the UK and South Africa..so my experience up to this point has been nothing but positive)  

I was in the back corner,  nursing my 7 month old little boy when one of the elder’s wives came up to me and said “do you have a shawl or something you can put on?” I said “no I don’t actually” I couldn’t believe this was happening. I will spare you the blow by blow of the conversation but I was basicaly asked to “consider the rest of the people there over my own right to nurse in public” When I pointed out that I was not even showing anything she said something along the lines of “yes…but,just the fact that you’re doing it” whaaaaaaaaat? Again. shock. My only response was to say “that is just really really sad that people here feel that way”

I walked to one of the sunday school rooms, feeling a bit shocked and shakey…I couldn’t believe it. When I sat down to finnish feeding Judah I just started to cry. I really don’t know why it affected me so much…but it did. About ten minutes later this woman came and found me and was wanting to talk to me and make sure there wasn’t anything “funny between us” I actually felt sorry for her. She really did not have a clue who she was talking to. She knew my parents but she didn’t know anything about me.

In our exchange, I was confronted with the two big buzz phrases that some Christians use on this issue.

1. Modesty and causing a brother to stumble (romans 14:29)

2. Causing offense and how we’re not supposed to do that.

I managed to communicate some points to her and ask some questions.

The first being, if people have an issue with breastfeeding, even if it’s not showing anything, why would a shawl help? She then told me that many of the women in the church have issues with other women breastfeeding in the main meeting, full stop. That their husbands are uncomfortable with it. I asked why? are they worried their husbands are looking at other women’s breasts? no no, nothing like that…they just feel strongly about modesty.

Ahah. There you have it. Modesty. I am not going to even go there right now and explain how I feel about that particlar issue…and how that word is used…but I did ask her this.

What is modesty? Is it being covered head to toe?? No of course not..that’s extreme right??? Well…where do you draw the line then? Do you let culture define it? Fasion trends? literal passages from scripture? (braids are not allowed then)

It seems as though Jesus spent a lot of time talking about the heart. He was very condeming of those who trusted in simply following the letter of the law, and seemed a lot more concerned about what was going on in someone’s heart. So when it comes to modesty. I believe it is more about an attitude you have in your heart, not always about what people see on the outside.

For example, if you see a woman sitting in a coffee shop, feeding her baby…and the baby suddenly pulls of the breast and decides to look around, and you get a flash of the woman’s breast. Is she being immodest? No, she’s probaby mortified and does what she can to cover herself up before anyone else gets an eyefull of a breast that she is most likely self concious of and not particularily proud of. Is she more modest if she’s not attractive and her breast isn’t exactly appealing? Is she less modest if she happens to be beautiful as well? How do we measure modesty? On how beautiful and appealing someone happens to be?

If we are talking about immodesty, as regards to dress, to me, the term would refer to someoe who trusts in their body, and uses it to get something they want….compliments, attention, love, sex, admiration, power, whatever that happens to be, but for crying out loud, NOT to a mother showing a bit of skin while she feeds her child.

It makes me wonder if people simply have a huge issue with a child sucking on a breast…if the act itself is what is unappealing and makes them cringe. I wonder if certain christians are using the ”modesty” excuse for the fact that the idea of a child nursing is in itself off putting.  If that is the case, then people need to really search their hearts and ask themselves what in them makes  natural function like feeding a child so uncomfortable to them. If they can not get over the oversexualization of the breasts to accept their first and primary function, or if they struggle with lust, and the mere sight of a breast sends them into a tizzy, then to me, the problem is with THEM, not the mother nursing.

They have options. They can look away. They can simply not come. Do these same people not go to the supermarket during the summer when skimpy clothes are everywhere and breastfeeding women are protected by the law? I suppose then they could pull up the ”but this is a church” argument. To which I say…the church is not a place or a building, it is the body of Christ gathered together, and it is meant to be a safe haven for all to come no matter what.  When Jesus was on earth, he hung out with the poor, and the down and outs, and those with bad reputations….he managed to hang around prosititues and never sin…and we know he reached out to them and they felt nothing but love from Him. He went for their hearts…and he won them. But that’s nothing to do with breastfeeding in public really. I get the impression that breastfeeding was a non issue back then….as it should be now. The Bible mentions it in the most normal terms possible. It’s simply what mothers did for their children, not only nourishing them physically, but creating a bond that is compared to the love that God has for us.

God designed our bodies to feed our children..and it must make Him really sad to see a culture that has allowed such a normal everyday invaluable tool in mothering, undervalued. So people may get defensive here and say “well it’s very much valued, but we shouldn’t have to look at it” or “it’s inappropriate to do in public” Sorry. It doesn’t wash. When a mother is told she needs to cover up she usually feels mortified, embarassed, ashamed, and like SHE has done something wrong. That’s not a way to value something.

If more teenagers and boys in particular were exposed to mothers nursing in public, it would become less of a taboo, and perhaps men and boys would start to recognize the primary function of the breasts, and perhaps girls would be more motivated to succeed at breastfeeding when their turn comes around. I’m so glad that if anything, my children will grow up knowing and experiencing first had the reason for breasts.

Not everyone who breastfeeds always does it discreatly 100% of the time. I admit there are times I have thrown some clothes without thinking on that are not totally condusive to feeding and suddenly found myself needing to nurse my baby. I’ll admit the previous Sunday this happened I was in a sun dress which isn’t the easiest to feed in…maybe not the best choice..but I think we mothers need a bit of grace and don’t need to be jumped on the moment we show too much skin. We’re not trying to make anyone stumble. We’re mothering our children. It’s sad that people immediately get a bit wierded out by seeing breasts used for their primary purpose. Why should we have to be bannished to another room and miss out on the service because our children need us?

If men are struggling with lust, we can help them out by not parading half naked in front of them, but….they need to train their eyes. In this day and age they simply will not escape skin exposed to them. If the bit of skin they see when a mother feeds their child is really causing their minds to spin out of control…then they should look away, and also seriously consider never going out in public again, especially in the summertime.  If the fact that a child is breastfeeding makes a man uncomfortable…even if it’s covered up…that’s pretty sick and sad and he should pray and ask God to heal his warped mindset on the matter.

It’s like in China..when they used to bind women’s feet….feet back then were the big turn on…the value of feet for sexual attraction was valued more than the ability for women to be able to walk, and many times women could barely walk as a result. So what would this church have done in ancient China? not let women walk in front of men? So now breasts serve a double purpose….and the culture’s value of them for sexual purposes seems to have trumped their primary purpose and made mothers who are using them in that way feel uncomfortable unless they are hidden away out of sight. In China the women were cripped by their practices…..and I wonder how much our society today has suffered because of our culture’s oversexualization of the breasts.

I realize I’ve touched on the larger issue of breastfeeding in public…but my main purpose was to address the issue with certain fellow Christians who seem to be using verses about not offending, not causing people to stumble, and modesty…..in a way that in the long run, does nothing to empower mothers, and normalize the normal way to feed children. It simply reinforces the warped mentality of the western world….and validates it.

When you start making rules in a church about breastfeeding, you’re heading down a legalistic path…and not winning any hearts. Sure you may have the odd mother (like me) who shows a bit too much skin one sunday because breastfeeding is now such a normal part of her life, she sometimes puts on a dress without thinking that was not made with lactating mothers in mind. But most of the time…we’re pretty good about it…because honestly…the last thing we want anyone to see is our post pregnancy tummy….so the odd indiscreat nursing episode is in no way justified as a reason to make women who are feeding their children feel ashamed, embarassed, and like they are doing something wrong…or causing someone else to sin. As far as causing offence…I just don’t think this issue is one that any sane person has a legitimate reason to be offended about.